Google Refreshes AdWords Location Targeting

The Locations Targeting interface is getting a makeover in AdWords. This comes as a move by Google to improve the the overall experience of their advertisers. Google is trying to make it easier for advertisers to navigate and obtain more detail on potential target locations through their AdWords accounts.

On your Campaign Settings tab in your AdWords interface you will now be able to pick a location that you want to target. It will give you the location and other matches that are near the location, the state that it's located in, and other related locations near to the location that you have entered. It will even put up locations near your location with the same name in case you have misspelled anything or there is another city close to it with the same name.

You can the Add, Exclude, or search other locations Nearby the locations and recommendations it gives you. It will break all these down for you as you can see in the photo below.

Another nice feature in the new interface is an easy to use map of the locations, and nearby cities that potentially could be targeted in you campaign. You can now view outside boundaries and multiple locations to select them simultaneously.

After you've selected all desired areas you want to target it will show you everything shaded in blue that you've selected on the map. It will also show a lighter shade of blue for the related areas which you can easily add at any time by clicking on the "add" link on the side. These are areas that are related to your area.

Another nice feature that the new location targeting system will allow you to see are reach numbers to help you estimate how many potential people your ad will target. This will give you a very general number of people located in that area that you can potentially target. Keep in mind that this is not census data or data you should use in a report. This is general data that you can use to get estimates for targeting your ad and planning out your budget.

You can still target radius by setting how far you would like to target from an exact location on the map that you choose. Now with location targeting limits you are no longer limited to 300 locations but to 10,000 locations per campaign. This will allow people to target a much wider area.

These changes are amazing for anyone that is targeting a demographic or specific area. The new easy to use interface hasn't changed very much but now allows me to easily get geographical reports and target customers based on location.

With the changes in the Location Targeting Tool, Keyword Tool, Dynamic Search Ads, and Display ads, one has to wonder what Google is up to. Are they trying to make things easier for customers or changing things up to get more data, while getting more money from advertisers? Let me know your thoughts below.